This sixth installment of a series features the ongoing adventures of a British cop.

For the past three years, Yorkshire-born expatriate Cole Thornton has run a bookshop in the sleepy surfer town of Shelter Cove, California. If the store is notable for anything, it’s for being one of the few businesses not yet bought by local land developer Arlo Rankoff. One day, a car crashes through the window of the shop, destroying Cole’s inventory and nearly killing motel owner and auxiliary police deputy Holly West, who came in to flirt with the Englishman. When Cole gets up and looks into the cab of the vehicle, all that’s left of the driver is his foot on the gas pedal. Soon Ben Gardner, Shelter Cove’s chief of police, arrives. He turns out to be angrier at Cole than at the surf bum he assumes to have driven the car. Gardner feels protective of Holly, the survivor of an abusive marriage, and he senses there’s something fishy going on with Cole. Gardner looks into the missing driver, who soon turns up dead. But Cole has bigger troubles to deal with: He hears that his violent, estranged younger brother, British cop Jim Grant, has been looking for him to settle some old business. First Cole’s ex–sister-in-law drops by to warn him, and then the dangerous man himself appears—out to bring his older brother to justice. Campbell (Beacon Hill, 2017, etc.) writes in a gracefully muscular prose enlivened by drolly cinematic dialogue: “ ‘I keep forgetting this is a litigious society. Poodle power.’ ‘You mean the woman dried her dog in the microwave?’ Cole raised his eyebrows. ‘What was General Electric thinking? Not putting that in the instructions.’ ‘I think it was a Samsung.’ ” The author excels at hiding the ball while still keeping readers invested in the story. It takes a while for Grant to show up, let alone for the main thrust of the plot to be revealed, but such inventive narrative strategies help Campbell keep his series fresh as it moves into its latest volume.

A tightly written and thoroughly engaging crime tale.

A righteous Yorkshire cop can't seem to stay out of trouble.

In order to rescue brutally assaulted teen Sharon Davis, veteran lawman Jim Grant breaks into the house where her assailant, Lee Adkins, is hiding and beats him for good measure. When Jamie Hope, the young constable who assisted him, reports Grant's excesses, the gritty Yorkshire cop gets suspended. It's a cold and snowy night, to boot. Needing a sympathetic ear and hoping for more, Grant heads to the Woodside Truck Stop and Diner and waitress Wendy Rivers, with whom he's had a long-running flirtation. Sure enough, warm, sassy Wendy puts him back in a good mood. But as he's about to drive away, Grant notices the lights go out in the diner, even though the place never closes. In the shadows, he discerns that a robbery is in progress and sneaks back in, thinking, first, that he can save Wendy and, second, that this might be exciting. The ensuing action unfolds in short, punchy chapters whose titles give minute-by-minute times. Grant watches the Ukrainian head thug pummel Wendy in an unsuccessful attempt to learn the location of the safe. When the tough goes looking for the chef, high-maintenance Mickey Frevert, Grant calls headquarters for backup, then rescues Wendy, at least temporarily. Next, the last person Grant could possibly want as an ally shows up: Jamie Hope. The arrival of more Ukrainians leaves the good guys feeling seriously overmatched.

Campbell's fourth Resurrection Man novel (Adobe Flats, 2014, etc.) is crackerjack entertainment: taut, gritty and full of devilish twists. 

A laconic loner squares off against a Wild West magnate who rules his dominion with an iron hand.

Grant, a poker-faced tough guy with a Marlboro Man vibe, takes a train to the arid town of Absolution, where the streets are eerily empty, and everyone he meets advises him bluntly to leave. He gets lodging at the Gage Hotel only by intimidating the desk clerk, then has to stand up to a would-be enforcer in his room. Grant's looking for Eduardo Cruz, a man the locals apparently know no better than the reader. He finds an ally, and some chemistry too, in feisty Sarah Hellstrom, who runs Gilda's Grill and Diner. She clues Grant in on Tripp Macready, who owns virtually everything in Absolution and repels visitors. Macready's the man to see if Grant wants unrestricted movement. Little by little, flashbacks begin to explain Grant's task. He had been part of a small team for the Allied Expeditionary Force, which included medic Pilar Cruz, who was more than a friend to him. Once Grant finds Eduardo Cruz, a doctor like his daughter, it's his sad task to inform him of her death. Although Grant has not intentionally crossed Macready, Cruz warns that a showdown between the two is now inevitable. And when Grant learns that Macready has been slapping Sarah around, he's unstoppable.

The prolific Campbell's third Resurrection Man novel (Montecito Heights, 2014, etc.) harkens back to the gritty but thinly plotted men's action series of the 1970s and ’80s, with less gore and a stylish noir voice.

In Campbell’s (Jamaica Plain, 2013, etc.) second book in his Resurrection Man series, a gritty detective steps through the looking glass of Los Angeles' porn industry and nearly loses his way.

Fresh from a controversial stint in Boston that earned him the nickname Resurrection Man, Yorkshire cop Jim Grant hits Los Angeles, where Sen. Dick Richards hires him to rescue his headstrong daughter, Angelina, from her nascent career as a porn star. (Her most recent film: Hunt for Pink October.) Grant is drawn to Richards' British wife, Maura, though her aloofness puzzles him. He agrees to the job and promises discretion, a vow that is immediately tested when attractive producer Robin Citrin pitches Grant a reality show, with him as the star. The smitten Grant accepts the gig as "the next Steven Seagal!" and falls into bed with Robin, all the while making small advances toward finding Angelina. Richards is none too happy with Grant's high TV profile but doesn't pull the plug on his investigation. Posing as an aspiring porn actor, Grant visits Zed Productions for an audition. His probe brings him into the orbit of drug kingpin Rodrigo Dominguez, who may or may not have kidnapped Angelina. Grant seems more bemused by the incongruity of a drug cartel moonlighting as kidnappers than intimidated by Dominguez's threats. And the deeper Grant digs, the more irregularities he finds in the Richards home.

Prolific Campbell layers an abundance of interesting movie trivia into the tale, and while the plot is shaggy, wry maverick Grant never fails to entertain.

Perps and the public beware: A maverick cop is on the job, and on the loose, in Boston.

Yorkshire copper Jim Grant has a mantra running through his head on a loop—"Keep out of trouble"—when he crosses the pond to interrogate Boston prisoner Freddy Sullivan about a burglary on Grant's home turf. Instead, in short order, Grant hooks up with a pretty fellow traveler for a quickie at an airport hotel and brawls with some street thugs because he just can't help it. He arrives for the interview with a bit of an edge; he and Sullivan have a history and trade insults before getting down to it. Things take a strange turn when Sullivan tearfully pleads with Grant to have him extradited back to England, and an even stranger turn when someone rolls a grenade into the interrogation room. The subsequent explosion shortens the questioning but lengthens Grant's stay in Beantown. His Boston contact, Detective Sam Kincaid, helps Grant in his search for truth and revenge. Grant and Kincaid aren't surprised when they trace the incident to the IRA, but they're unable to prevent Sullivan's death. On the plus side, Grant gets real traction with the help of John Cornejo, a like-minded Marine. The two-fisted trio blazes through a high-end cathouse, a respectable-looking shell company called Delaney Enterprises and countless toughs only too eager to fight them.

Grim and gritty and packed with action and crackling dialogue, the latest from Campbell (Blue Knight, White Cross, 2009, etc.) opens a new series called A Resurrection Man.

An ex–vice cop is compelled to investigate when a string of disappearances, culminating in murder, strikes too close to home.

After 18 years with the West Yorkshire Police, Vince McNulty has been abruptly fired for misconduct. A firestorm of bad press hasn’t helped. McNulty now spends most days watching old movies and getting erotic massages, at first on the outskirts of his former stomping grounds. But so aimless is his life and so deep his addiction that he starts patronizing the same parlors he used to bust as a vice cop in Leeds and its vicinity: the Northern X chain. Unbeknownst to McNulty, girls from several of these clubs have recently vanished. The mystery takes a darker turn when the corpse of one masseuse is discovered next to an oil drum. CCTV footage depicts the Vauxhall Astra of McNulty, whose past difficulties are well-known to the Ecclesfield Station’s weary Inspector Tynan, the man working the case. Unfortunately for him, McNulty has been disorderly in more than one parlor of late. He hooks up with petty criminal Donkey “Donk” Flowers to learn the word on the street. They walk back to McNulty’s flat, where they find another body, and Donk lights a match before McNulty can tell him that he smells gas. And that’s only half the story.

A retired cop himself, Campbell crafts a familiar plot in his sixth novel (Blue Knight, White Cross, 2009, etc.). But every detail feels authentic, and his dark, muscular prose suggests the best pulp writers of the ’50s.

Two experienced police officers find themselves in trouble as they investigate a car theft in a dangerous Yorkshire housing estate.

Steve Decker and Dave Black are tough coppers whose friendship goes back many years. They supported each other through Dave’s divorce and Steve’s problems with a sick child and a wife who handles the stress by drinking. Now Steve is in the hospital clinging to life after being bashed with a paving stone at the White Cross estate. Slowly, Steve relives the day in his mind: the routine briefing before starting his shift, the equally routine incidents like investigating an egg-throwing episode, the hunt for a stolen car involved in several dangerous and damaging incidents. The chief suspect is Shaun Pennington, a much-arrested teen responsible for most of the crime in the area Black and Decker patrol on foot. With Dave’s support Steve struggles to remember, flatlines, recovers and keeps repeating the events leading up to the moment the paving stone comes crashing down on his head, until in a electrifying conclusion he finally recalls what happened to him and Dave.

Campbell’s 30 years as a Yorkshire policeman infuse this unusual debut procedural with grim reality and the harsh humor that helps keep the coppers sane.